Contents

Ours is the most outspoken society on Earth. Americans are freer to think what we will and say what we think than any other people, and freer today than in the past. We can bare the secrets of government and the secrets of the bedroom. We can denounce our rulers, and each other, with little fear of the consequences. There is almost no chance that a court will stop us from publishing what we wish: in print, on air, or on the Web. Hateful and shocking expression, political or artistic, is almost all free to enter the marketplace of ideas.

Americans should scent danger when a government tries to stop a newspaper from disclosing the origins of an unpopular war ... or accuses a newspaper of endangering national security by disclosing secret and illegal wiretapping.

The law of the American Constitution allows suppression only when violence or violation of law are intended by speakers and are likely to take place imminently. But perhaps judges, and the rest of us, will be more on guard now for the rare act of expression — not the burning of a flag or the racist slang of an undergraduate — that is genuinely dangerous. I think we should be able to punish speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience some of whose members are ready to act on the urging. That is imminence enough.

The meaning of the First Amendment has been, and will be, shaped by each American generation: by judges, political leaders, citizens. There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment.… But I am convinced that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, disturbing speech, is no longer in doubt.

A final argument for broad freedom of expression is its effect on the character of individuals in a society. Citizens in a free society must have courage — the courage to hear not only unwelcome political speech but novel and shocking ideas in science and the arts.

The most surprising and provocative occasions are those when Lewis himself departs from civil libertarian free speech orthodoxy. He is not, it turns out, a fan of an unqualified federal shield law that would protect reporters from the obligation to reveal their anonymous sources in criminal cases.

In the 21st century, the heroic First Amendment tradition may seem like a noble vision from a distant era, in which heroes and villains were easier to identify. But that doesn’t diminish the inspiring achievements of First Amendment heroism. Conservative as well as liberal judges now agree that even speech we hate must be protected, and that is one of the glories of the American constitutional tradition. Anthony Lewis is right to celebrate it.

What distinguishes us from all other nations is the range and depth of the First Amendment's expressive individual liberties against government control of what we say and think. Having researched and written about it for more than 50 years, I can attest that the most compelling readable account of its tumultuous and often imperiled history is the newly published Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis.

Anthony Lewis's Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment offers a lucid and engaging overview of American free-speech law. The former Nieman Fellow has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, and this volume puts the skills that earned him those accolades much on display. Again and again, he brings to life the dramatis personae in leading cases, plucks out moving or telling quotations, and explains who won and who lost in order to provide a clear introduction to First Amendment doctrine.

Lewis comes to his subject with great experience and depth. He was a Supreme Court reporter during the Warren court, when it was rousing the long-moribund protections of the First Amendment. ... Lewis always stood as an eloquent guardian of our rights. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate strongly communicates Lewis' high regard for the courageous judges who have molded our nation's free expression rights into a bulwark against censorship and imposed orthodoxy. It is worth picking up this slim volume simply to be reminded of the growing pains it took to get here.

Long-time legal affairs writer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis recounts dozens of landmark court cases while eloquently conveying the simple majesty and importance of the First Amendment in this splendid account, which ought to be required reading in every high school and college.

Anthony Lewis' Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a succinct and eloquent account of our nation's history of struggle with this seemingly simple concept of freedom of expression. As we know, it is not simple, and the struggle continues. Lewis presents the conflicts inherent in this guarantee of free speech and a free press and makes clear the complexities and implications of our evolving interpretation.

Lewis blends a profound understanding of First Amendment jurisprudence and history with an enjoyable writing style that his readers have long come to admire. In our war-torn era where dissent and open-minded debate have become problematic, Lewis compels us to remember the crucial function free speech serves in our democratic form of government.

First, the issue is not the thought that we hate, as though defenders of hate speech laws wanted to get inside people's minds. The issue is publication and the harm done to individuals and groups through the disfiguring of our social environment by visible, public, and semipermanent announcements to the effect that in the opinion of one group in the community, perhaps the majority, members of another group are not worthy of equal citizenship. ... Second, the issue is not just our learning to tolerate thought that we hate—we the First Amendment lawyers, for example. The harm that expressions of racial hatred do is harm in the first instance to the groups who are denounced or bestialized in the racist pamphlets and billboards. ... The question is about the direct targets of abuse. Can their lives be led, can their children be brought up, can their hopes be maintained and their worst fears dispelled, in a social environment polluted by these materials?